The Blog of Spencer Roach

Today I had to help one of my coworkers get on the computer. He, for some reason, did not take his computer courses back when he began working in the Garden Center in March (AKA someone didn’t take his courses for him), so now he had to sit through the monotony. I decided to look at my computer courses and noticed one that was not complete: the GM CEC (Customer Experience Coordinator) training course. Even though the course is optional, I still decided to take it.

Essentially, the CEC’s job is to run the department when the managers are not there to do it themselves. As I was bored, I decided to “take” it to see if I would be a good CEC. Naturally, I briefly skimmed through every single section of the training module, but there was a ten-question quiz to complete in order to get credit for taking the course. Despite not reading about the job, I managed to get a perfect score on the quiz simply because the questions either required common sense or were easy enough that I could guess correctly, and now according to the company’s own measurements, I am now qualified to take on the first “leadership” role the store offers. And they say the education system has been fucked up by standardized testing.

I don’t take the CEC position seriously. Even though the only CEC makes about the same as I do, they treat her like a manager (which sucks sometimes since we have to work for pricks), only she doesn’t get all the cool benefits of being a manager (though, as the coworker said, she gets to smoke cigarettes all the time). To me, this seems stupid. She (supposively) has a skill that other people don’t have to use, so why she doesn’t get fairly compensated for using that skill baffles me. I would not be a CEC if it was offered to me simply because it’s more work but no more pay. Either give me a blue shirt or don’t even bother with letting me supervise the kiddies since there already is GM manager and my GM assistant manager to supervise (note: supervise, not make decisions as they are quickly learning).

In fact, I’ve already been forced to supervise without the almighty CEC credential. Recently my coworkers and I were told to work M-carts, which are basically carts where backstock is stored until enough room exists to put the product out. My boss told me to lead the effort, assigning carts to people and “making sure” that they were working the carts. The funniest part is that my assistant manager was also there that morning, but my main boss apparently did not trust her to do the supervising.

The funniest part about that day, though, was after she arrived at work (an hour late again, and this was after she tried to guarantee that she would be on time), she asked me about the progress we had made. Then, after I noticed one of my coworkers was late coming back from her lunch, she wanted me to call her and tell her to come back to toys. I said, “Isn’t that your job?” and she promptly called her.

The point of this little rant is that for me, it does take a computer course to learn the basics of supervising. It takes these things: the respect of your coworkers, skill in the required job area, basic managing skills, the illusion that you work hard, and the ability to confront problems and problem people. Having all these things are more important than some stupid class.